The present invention relates to wood splitters. An emerging energy consciousness has rendered such devices more popular. Splitters in which a ram for driving the wood into a cutter is driven by a hydraulic or air cylinder are commonly available on the market.
The drawback with such splitters is that they are somewhat slow and generally expensive. The prior art is repleat with various mechanical splitters, but none of them seem to be available in the market place. While the reasons for commercial failure of these mechanical devices are not known for certain, some of the drawbacks of such constructions can be appreciated by studying them.
For example the device disclosed in the patent to Power U.S. Pat. No. 946,705 discloses a crank driven ram to which an axe head is connected. The crank can be engaged with a pulley which is driven by a motor. However, this places a heavy load on the motor, particularly when the crank is first engaged.
The patents to Hauberg U.S. Pat. No. 1,231,525 and Schmidt U.S. Pat. No. 1,666,795 both disclose devices which operate continually. Continual operation may help to minimize overload problems, but such continual operation is of course dangerous. One would have to be very careful to avoid getting his hands and arms cut while trying to feed wood to a continually operating machine.
The relatively high cost and slow operation of air and hydraulic cylinder wood splitters and the past failure of mechanical alternatives illustrates the long felt need in this art for an effective mechanical splitter.